The feature name XXX already exists in SharePoint. You need to rename the feature before solution deployment can succeed

Hi All, 

During the development of SharePoint solutions, we may face an error as follows: 

The feature name XXX  already exists in SharePoint. You need to rename the feature before solution deployment can succeed

FIX:

There are 2 easy to circumvent this issue: 

1) use the stsadm commands "uninstallfeature" and then "deactivate" the feature. 

OR 

2) C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\FEATURES\ and remove the directory named XXX. 

Deploy the solution again and it will succeed. 

But, if have not deactivated the features and say if we have a list "Annotations" on quick launch which we provisioned then we may encounter another bug: 

Exception from HRESULT 0x81070215

FIX: 

Yet again we have to use STSADM command. The syntax is:

stsadm.exe -o forcedeletelist -url <url>

 For e.g. if the list called as "Annotations" has corrupted just fire up this command:

stsadm -o forcedelete -url http://server/apac/lists/annotations

For more info:
http://bloggingabout.net/blogs/harold/archive/2009/01/10/deleting-a-broken-sharepoint-list-using-stsadm.aspx
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262609.aspx

Just fire the STSADM command and activate the feature.

Cheers, 

--Aaroh